Christmas Ornament Learning Activities

These learning activities don’t use actual Christmas ornaments, but they do use the shapes of ornaments to aid in learning, or making an ornament with an educational twist.

Look We’re Learning has a set of printable worksheets using Christmas ornaments to learn about patterns that are the same and different. There are color and black and white versions included so you can have kids color all the ornaments, or just color the ones that match.

Learn about patterns and make your own with these free printables from Planes and Balloons. There are options for picking what comes next in a repeating pattern, blank ornaments so you can make your own pattern, and a coloring sheet with different designs of ornaments and you can draw lines to the matching ones or color them the same.

Little learners can practice tracing short lines with these printable ornaments from Fluffy Tots. You can get a sample for free or buy a set of 60 different ornaments that let kids practice short straight, curved and curly lines.

Add a bit of critical thinking to your Christmas learning activities with this Christmas decoder project from STEAM Powered Family. Use the symbols on the ornaments to decode the secret message, then find the word that matches and put the ornament back together. There are also blank ornaments so kids can write their own messages, or you can use the code to make up your own statements and have kids decode them.

Get kids coding for Christmas with these binary code ornaments from Little Bins for Little Hands. Once you know the basics of binary you can spell out holiday themed words, kids names or other secret messages and turn them into holiday ornaments.

And while we’re making ornaments with an educational twist, why not paint some ornaments that teach kids about symmetry? Download templates from Crafting a Fun Life or have kids draw their own, paint on half and make a symmetrical ornament that’s perfect for displaying in the classroom.

Learning numbers actually involves a few different skills, from recognizing the shape of the number and knowing the word that goes with it to understanding one to one correspondence for counting and what order the numbers go in.

A lot of this is learned best through play and activities that get kids counting and tracing and otherwise interacting with numbers. These activities can help.

I specifically mentioned tracing above because of these number formation rhymes cards from Teaching Mama, which can be used in lots of ways to practice making the shapes of the numbers, including tracing, lining up items on the number shapes (and counting them!), using playdough to shape the numbers and so on. Each number has a little rhyme to help you remember how to make it, which is cute.

And speaking of playdough, you can find lots of playdough number mats with different themes for kids to use as they learn about numbers. Preschool Play and Learn, for example, has these cute apple themed ones that also teach one to one correspondence as you learn the numbers and count to 10.

Or use these tree-themed ones from Live Over Cs to form the numbers, count out items on a ten frame and place the correct number of items in the tree to match the number (do this with playdough, little buttons or whatever manipulatives you have on hand). Your little builders will also love these Duplo number mats from Life Over Cs, which allow you to shape the number out of blocks and count out the number of blocks that corresponds to each number.

I also love these mats from The Savvy Sparrow that include the number and the word you can trace with playdough or marker, showing how to count the number on your fingers, a tens frame and a number line.

Finger plays and counting songs are lots of fun for little ones, too, and Childhood 101 has a great collection of songs and rhymes having to do with numbers (as well as printable song cards you can use with them.

This cardboard roll number chain form Hands On As We Grow would be a fun addition to singing number songs or to use in other play and counting games. And we all love something easy to make with stuff we already have.

Older kids who already know the order of numbers can also use these connect the dot number printables from Fun Learning for Kids. Or use the shapes for playdough mats or to practice tracing even for kids who don’t know all the numbers in order yet.

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